MOST POPULAR FEATURESTop 50 Pokémon of All Time
Can you believe there are now six generations of Pokémon? Six!! That's a crazy amount of different creatures to collect. But which are the cream of the crop? Don't worry, Magikarp isn't actually one of them.

I am a PS3 owner and someday hope to be a PS4 owner, yet I am not at all dissatisfied with my choice to delay purchase, solely based on the current PS4 library. When I transitioned from a Playstation 1 to a Playstation 2, I was pleasantly surprised that I could for the most part rid myself of my PS1...

Putting the shattered series back together.

Maybe their moms didn't hold them enough as children or perhaps they bruise easy,
but the seemingly tough Contra soldiers sure can't take a beating. Here they go
again, jumping through acres of jungle, diving through the seediest underbelly
of a red hot Alien Hell, and then oops, some winged alien accidentally nudges
them and they keel over.

And
I wouldn't have it any other way.

Battling through two utter disasters bearing the Contra name on the
Playstation, Contra has returned to the 2D ways that made the series
a classic of the 8-bit age. Contra: Shattered Soldier brings some respect
back to this once proud game. It's about time.

Bill Rizer, hero of the Alien Wars (Contra III) has been called back
into battle. Teamed with the cyborg Lucia, the two must halt the return of the
sinister forces of Blood Falcon. Essentially, the story is just a cardboard
prop. It's all about explosions, people.

The game follows the formula of its forbears. Most levels have you side-scrolling
from left to right, blasting the constant stream of baddies with your big guns.
There are also top to bottom levels and the occasional head-on perspective.
All of them maintain the single 2D plane.

Amidst all this chaos, there's a pattern to learn that will get you out alive.
In some ways, the strict memorization is the backbone of the entire game. The
levels in earlier Contras or the Metal Slug series had some free-flowing,
run and gun areas that would build up to the stage boss. Shattered Soldier
is more tightly wound with less of this on-your-toes gameplay and more memorized
maneuvering, especially with the added mid-level bosses (much like the Genesis'
Contra: Hard Corps).

These various bosses call for effective usage of your arsenal of weapons.
Instead of weapon upgrades, Bill and Lucia come pre-equipped with three interchangeable
and chargeable weapons: the standard machine gun, a flame thrower and ground-cruising
missiles. Different situations call for different weapons, and maximizing your
artillery is part of the pattern play and difficulty of this new Contra.

Indeed, Contra: Shattered Soldier is balls to the floor hard. Enemies
rain down in droves from all sides. Shots of shrapnel and explosion litter the
cruel wasteland of 6 levels (2 must be unlocked). Sometimes Bill and Lucia will
have the aid of a vehicle, like a futuristic motorbike or some flying missiles,
but even then, the menacing onslaught just keeps on coming.

The difficulty is furthered by the hardcore but tasty limitation on lives and
continues. You are given only 3 lives and 5 continues on Normal - and these
aren't your namby-pampy "start-from-where-I-was" continues. These are the traditional
continues that boot you all the way back to the start of the level or the halfway
point if you even made it that far.

Easy mode gives you 8 lives and 99 continues. Even then, it's no cakewalk,
but it's just enough to force you to learn the patterns and figure out how to
survive. Contra: Shattered Soldier definitely isn't something you'll
squeak through cleanly on your first go. You'll play for a bit, then die, then
start over, get a little bit further, and die again. Each time, you'll be a
little more prepared as you discover more of the shot patterns.

In
addition to a classic 'point' score, performance is letter-graded at the close
of each stage. Successful grades throughout the main stages will unlock the
later stages. Nabbing a good grade requires minimizing deaths and continues
and maximizing the kill rate - nearly every robotic menace, wayward missile,
or festering pus mutant boss counts toward your hit percentage.

Most bosses are wretched abortions that writhe and ooze with toxic venom.
They're pretty gross and are segmented with different parts to destroy. Total
annihilation of every form of a boss will net the most percentage points. The
other boss characters are massive, screen filling mechs, armed to the teeth.

And what's Contra without a teammate by your side? Keeping with tradition,
the game can be played co-op simultaneously. While two-player mode does stir
up all those fun, old school memories, both players had better know their patterns,
because even with the added aid of a pal, the weaving and dodging against the
diabolic forces of Blood Falcon remains relatively the same. Both players contribute
to the same hit percentage scale, so if one guy sucks, your percentage will
drop. A record of how much each player contributed would have added to the competition,
though there's still the traditional score accessible through the pause menu
for those of you keeping tabs.

Contra: Shattered Soldier captures an apocalyptic drabness with muted
tones, but explosions aplenty brighten things up. Some of the object models
look too flat without enough varied lighting, hindering the illusion of 3D.
Bill and Lucia's animations are a little stiff, but the various bosses fare
better with sharply animated undulations and metallic transformations. Let's
be frank, though - you're not playing Contra for the graphics.

A heavy metal rock beat drives the game, which oddly works well as an accompaniment to the showering spray of destruction. Some of the classic sound effects and short musical riffs are back in full form as well, so the veterans will be right at home.

In the same way that Castlevania: Symphony
of the Night built upon the Castlevania legacy without really changing
the core gameplay ideas, Shattered Soldier marks a return to the series'
roots while still bringing something new to the table. It's fun to learn the
patterns and hone in on that perfect game, though the limited gameplay and the
shortness of the actual experience make it well suited for a rental.